4 comments:

Yes, Bell Curve, General Hayden's remarks make perfect Orwellian sense. The Fourth Amendment specifies that "Warrants shall issue on probable cause." Since they did not use warrants, they did not require probable cause. What could be wrong with that? :-)

Let's remember the key issue: Bush claims he needs this power to fight terrorists, and so long as gets away with that justification, a signficant fraction of Americans will believe him. But no credible claim has been put forward that it has been helpful. And no one should trust the Federal government (especially his Administration...) with power like that. Nixon claimed the same powers for the same reasons and was secretly abusing them. Lesser figures (e.g., J. Edgar Hoover) have also been known to abuse them.

If any Democratic President had committed a fraction of the abuses with a fraction of the arrogance Bush has, this Congress would have impeached his ass three years ago. It's maddening! After so many repeated lies and distortions, how can anyone believe anything Bush says anymore?? Argh.

I heard a great comment on the "we need this to fight the terrists" argument from Bush. Some prominent Democratic Senator (I can't remember who) pointed out that by Cherthoff's own admission thousands of Americans have turned up in these warrantless searches. He then asked [paraphrasing], "Are we to believe that there have been thousands of people with direct contacts with Al Qaeda operating inside the United States for 5 years and we've only arrested one or two of them?"

Bush can't have it both ways and the Democrats should stop letting the press let Bush have it both ways. Either this is an invaluable tool in which case the administration has been domonstrably lax in their responsibility to actually arrest these people or they don't need this to watch terrorists but rather to watch innocent Americans who are not even arrestable under the "enemy combatant" standards Bush claims!